Category: Family

Today, the LGBTQ website Mombian is sponsoring the inaugural ‘Blogging for Our Elders’ event. On Monday, November 9, 2015, a team of LGBT and progressive sites will run posts dedicated to raising awareness for the issue of LGBT aging. The day of visibility coincides with the TV premiere of Gen Silent, a powerful documentary that […]

Dear John, This terrible day is here again – eight years ago, you died. You were 41. And you died. Eight years are a long time. I find that now when I think of you, my first thoughts aren’t of that day. Instead, I think about when we first met and the times you took […]

I’m actually late this year with this annual blog post. Finding information on Toys for Tots programs can be time-consuming and challenging. My work with the AMPLIFY project has expanded my awareness of how difficult it can be to access programs the further your family lives from an urban hub. My hope is to add […]

Hello from downtown Riverside, California. We arrived Saturday afternoon for a week-long sojourn in Southern California. Laura has a work related conference from Sun- Thurs and we tacked on a few days for some fun. I’ve never been to California before and I’ve never had a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean either, so this is […]

CN: Discussion of suicide Write about a defining moment in your life when you were forced to grow up in an instant (or a series of instants). My mother has always lived with depression and a host of other ailments, many resulting from a childhood bout of encephalitis that destroyed her short-term memory. She was […]

I find myself fascinated with the concept of a basic white girl who likes PSL. The intrigue is both in the sexist assumptions about women and the class issues – I can name dozens of women like me who grew up desperately aspiring to be a basic white girl. It finally dawned on me that […]

When was the last time you felt truly rejuvenated and energized? What made you feel that way? In late August, the AMPLIFY project took us to Erie County for the weekend – we were there to celebrate Erie Pridefest and enjoy a mini-break of sorts. I had never actually been to Erie proper, just driven […]

It’s back-to-school time: do you love the start of school or dread it? Living, as I do, in a family with no school-aged children, no children at all and no one attending school, my feelings at best are mired in nostalgia and too many hours on Facebook. Ahem. My original thought was to make a […]

If there were a real Fountain of Youth, would you drink the water? The vast majority of my blogging of late has been the AMPLIFY posts and updates related to various incidents of violence and murder. To give myself some balance, I’m going to return to the tried and true method of blogging daily with […]

I can’t remember how we celebrated my 35th birthday (in 2005), but I’m relatively sure it involved dinner with Ledcat and probably my parents or friends. I’m sure there was cake and singing. Probably my then-coworkers gave me a card and treated me to lunch. The things that you do. Looking back, I’d tell […]